By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif -- The legal battle isn't over yet, but the political battle is—and we Jews may forever have the opportunity to look atop Mount Soledad to see the symbol of our complacency and political temerity.

As a community, we could have raised our voices. We could have actively taken our message to the rest of San Diego. We could have tried to persuade our fellow citizens in letters to the editor, in forums, advertisements, and in discussions over the airwaves.  But we did none of that. As a community, we cravenly cowered as the demagogues of the media inflamed Christian opinion and as they turned the state's political leadership into "yes" men and "yes" women.

Whenever our Jewish community fails to speak out about the vital moral issues of the day, we later shrei gevalt. We were silent before World War II when America didn't want to accept Jews attempting to escape Nazi Europe. We were silent when generals told us bombing the tracks to Auschwitz would do no good.  All too many of us—but thankfully not all—were silent during the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Many of us were silent about genocides in far-off places like Cambodia, Bosnia and the Sudan, undermining our argument that other people had the duty to intervene during the Holocaust..

We've been silent when we've seen hate crimes committed against African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Asian-Americans, Muslim-Americans, and gay and lesbian Americans. And  now in the matter of the "cross"—in which the militants of America's most populous religion have been attempting ideologically to bully the rest of us—we're being silent again.

For the sin we have committed by seeing wrong but saying nothing, we must shame-facedly acknowledge that we are complicit in the victory of the Christian triumphalists.

Ashamnu.

We are as much to blame as the politicians—some of them Jews, even—who pandered to "public opinion" instead of defending the principles upon which the United States grew strong.

We should have been out there attempting to persuade San Diegans that the insistence of Christian triumphalists upon making their cross a symbol for all war veterans utterly contradicts the ideal that America is a country which respects all religions. 

Although the triumphalists—those who believe Christianity must "triumph" over other religions—may celebrate today, they know not what they do.  Their "victory" is one more step towards destroying an ideal that made America strong and admired around the world. It undermines the teaching that we must respect the other person, whether or not he or she shares our religion, national background, or race.

The real meaning of the bill signing ceremony by President George W. Bush yesterday was that as far as our political system is concerned, there are two kinds of Americans—the real ones, who are Christians, and the "others," a diverse group of second-class citizens who include not only us Jews, but also Hindus, Muslims, Baha'i, Buddhists, Confucianists, Taoists, Shinto, Sikhs, atheists, agnostics, humanists, and every other variety of non-Christian believer.

As a Jewish community, we have to face the awful truth that we were too afraid of possibly offending some Christian in power or in business to take a stand on this important issue  Our silence not only failed to refute their arguments; it emboldened the triumphalists. They saw that if even the Jewish community wouldn't speak up for the principle of separation of church and state, Christian triumphalism was politically unstoppable.

We Jews were too willing to let Philip Paulson and his lawyer Jim McElroy fight this battle for us.  

And, apparently, we still are. 

I'm  certain that the overwhelming majority of San Diego Jews would like McElroy to win the constitutional battle, but we're too unsure of ourselves—even after more than 350 years in America—to come out and say so. We can take ourselves out of the ghetto, but we can't take the ghetto mentality out of us. 

Instead of legally skewering the arguments that the cross "really isn't a religious symbol—it's a war memorial," instead of doing everything within our intellectual power to help in the preparation for the case that inevitably will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, we keep hoping that McElroy, a nice Christian boy,  will pull a legal rabbit out of his hat and save us all that embarrassment.

Our passive, do-nothing "strategy" seems to be to hope that McElroy will win Paulson's  lawsuit, and then, when the triumphalists go nuts, to tell them, "don't blame us, it was that atheist who filed that suit and it was one of your boys who argued it!" 

It's just plain cowardice.  We can do better.